Visiting Eltz Castle

If you don't have access to a car, it isn't easy to reach Eltz Castle. There's no train access, since it's a castle up in the hills. Bus service is intermittent because it's partway between Koblenz and Trier – which means it's not near anywhere. For a normal plebs like us, visiting the castle at Eltz was a distant goal. Until the Hungarian family arrived in a car for a visit and were easily convinced to take on a road trip to Eltz Castle.

It's a two-and-a-half drive from the Dorf to the entrance of gravel parking lot on the Eltz estate where you pay the old man a couple of euros to park. If you roll past him, as we saw a Dutch family do, he will shake his fist at you until you return to his booth and pay him.

Then you walk into a nature reserve and hike a half kilometer along a forest trail that goes around a hill, edging a deep ravine. Eventually, you turn an outcropping of basalt and there's the castle, standing on a rocky crag in a valley.

It's then that you appreciate the difficulty to reaching this place. As a veteran of Neuschwanstein Castle, I was half-expecting crowds of people, sausage vendors, pretzel pushers, and kiosks serving frosty glasses of Weissbier. There's none of that tourist nonsense near Eltz castle. It's just a castle surrounded by nature.

It's not until you step into the castle and start walking up the stairs smoothed by rain and the feet of visitors that it once again takes on the familiar feel of a tourist destination. There's a restaurant with a terrace that has a nice view of the river valley below. There's a museum that you pay to see the Eltz family's jewels. There are paid guided tours, which are the only way to get inside of the castle.

Rubber-necking in the courtyard.

We strolled through the courtyard, took in the valley views, and looked around. Then we walked down to the valley floor below the castle and you see that the castle hasn't been completely surrendered to the tourists. The castle is surrounded by a nature reserve with birds chirping and the sound of a river rushing by. There are signs around the valley forbidding the flying of drones.

The castle owners caught on that it wouldn't be as romantic if they slapped a parking lot at the castle’s foot. And the walk to the castle and around the castle on the valley floor makes the long drive worthwhile. Inside the castle is one thing, but the view from it, especially with the basalt cliffs and rushing river, makes it fair more memorable.

You come here for the castle, but it's everything else that sticks with you.

There's the castle, and then there's the wonderful-ness around the castle.